Undesired Destiny
by Tista
Summary: Alternate Universe. Xander's unknown gifts awake, and bring trouble with them. Spike and Dru face off with Kendra.


TITLE: Undesired Destiny 

AUTHOR: Tista 

DISTRIBUTION: [Email me][1]

FEEDBACK: I beg for it. 

PART: 1 of ? 

RATING: Who knows? :) I'd say PG-13-ish. 

SUMMARY: Alternate Universe. Xander's unknown gifts awake, and bring trouble with them. Spike and Dru face off with Kendra. 

The sunlight was shining in through the curtains, playing on the floor, across the dresser and onto the bed. A boy lay in the bed, with the blanket wrapped around him tightly, and pulled up high. His head was on a stuffed dinosaour - the pillow was on the floor, with several toys animals on top of it. They were on their sides, with a towel thrown over them to simulate the bed of the boy. 

She gave the boy one last kiss, and slipped away. 

They didn't see him in school that day, but no one worried. He missed school a lot these days, but he always had notes (no one looked to closely at the signitures of his father; no one wanted to get involved.) No one worried when he didn't show the next day, either, or the next. They began to notice after two weeks, and one concerned teacher called his father, who sounded drunk on the phone. He said, if the teacher could understand through all the slurrings and hiccups, that "the damn kid run off" and that the father was "better off". The teacher brought this to the principal, wanting to report child abuse, but he talked her out of it, and so the matter was blown off. 

The father, for his part, really did supect his son had run off: he never thought to check his son's room. He didn't notice the smell, either; it wasn't really noticeable in the overall stink of the house. 

Two people did notice: a young man called Jesse, and a bright young classmate by the name of Willow Rosenberg. She knew he could disappear for weeks at a time, first too sore from the beatings to move, and later too ashamed to be seen. But he always called her to tell her, at least once he could move from his bed to reach the phone. She knew better then to call him, and he didn't have access to a computer, so she came to school each day with hope in her heart, and went to bed every night weeping, wondering if he was alive. 

He thought of her too, but knew it would be useless to try and contact her. Contact with anyone was hopeless, so he floated in nightmares of others' imagaining, awaking every night at midnight for an hour to his own personal nightmare - his reality. 

***

Willow reclined in her chair, and swept back her hair with one hand. In the other, she held a Pepsi, and the table in front of her was covered in school papers. Normally she liked doing her homework, but lately she hadn't been able to concentrate. 

Whenever she tried to do a math problem, she heard Xander asking why they accepted the laws of math without question. When she looked at a map, or tried to think of history, she could see Xander moping around: "Will, I'm here and now. Why should I learn about there and then?" And, of course, the words it always came down to: 

"If it doesn't help me deal with Dad, what's it worth?" 

She shook her head, picked up a pencil, and did a few math problems. She knew she was getting them wrong, but at the moment, it didn't matter to her. Come morning, she knew, she'd be upset with her own lack of diligance. She would re-do the problems, and maybe get them right this time, and maybe up her grades. But her grades weren't the most important thing in the world now - they had been, when she had still thought she could gain her parents attention by getting all A-pluses. She knew now that wouldn't work. 

And, anyway, what did it matter? Her parents might not pay attention to her, they might not _love_ her, but they gave her food, clothing, a brand new laptop, a home where nobody hurt her... 

The phone startled her, and she picked it up, still lost in her thoughts. "Hello?" 

"Hey, Willow. Thought we might head down to the Bronze, hang for a while, have some fun." 

He was trying to cheer her up, she knew that. "I've got work to do." 

"Well, yeah, so do I, but can't we take a break?" Jesse sounded desperate. "Just a short one?" 

She looked down at the pile of homework. On top was her math paper, on which she'd done three problems before the phone rang. And next to the the problems, she'd drawn eyes, with tears leaking out of them. "Yeah. Yeah, ok. Meet you in half-an-hour?" 

"That'd be great. Seeya." And he hung up. 

She erased her doodle of eyes, and got back to the problems. She could do them all before she left if she hurried. 

***

Spike threw his glass across the room, smiled as it hit the wall and exploded into a million tiny pieces. "Bloody Slayer," he muttered to himself as he reached out for the bottle of scotch. "Bloody fast Slayer." 

It wasn't _his_ fault he couldn't kill this Slayer. Besides, they hadn't come so he could kill the Slayer. They'd come because she had insisted they come, Slayer or no. "I must have the child," she'd told him, again and again, ingnoring his protests. "He calls to me." 

She'd assured him she would never leave him for the boy - "He's a mortal child," she'd explained, as if to a simpleton. "He sings to me, yes, but you entwine yourself around me in a way no one else could ever match." Still, he worried. Not just about her love for him, but for her unlife. He'd tried to hunt this Slayer several times already, each time barely escaping. Dru told him he neeeded minions, but he had never hired help before. He could do whatever needed doing himself. 

Still. 

Maybe minions weren't _such_ a bad idea. They won't actually kill her, of course, or even need to be there before he took her life. Just keep her off her balance for a month or two, keep her away from Dru, and finally drive her crazy enough for him to deal with. Alone. 

He sensed Dru before he heard her - there was something distinctly _odd_ about her smell tonight. It reminded him of something...Something from his past...He shook off the thought and got up to greet her. "How's the kid, luv?" The smell...So overpowering... "Dru, pet, how'd it go?" He made his way over the bodies he'd dragged in earlier for her, and pushed open the door. 

She was lying on the ground, arms straining, trying to reach something in the sky only she could see. The smell was overpowering, and now he recognized it: her blood. He rushed over, knelt down beside, slid her head onto his lap. "Shhh, let's get you in, I've got some fresh bodies from the Bronze, come'n..." He knew he babbling, but what was he to do? He picked her up carefully, and glanced around before re-entering the factory and closing the door. 

"She shines...She's too bright to look at..." 

"Shh, luv. You need blood." Who shone? And who was able to hurt her like this? He'd never seen her half this bad. He lay her down next to a brightly dressed boy, and tilted her head. She morphed, and drank. A lifetime later she turned to look at him. 

"I knew she was there, I avoided her, the moon told me, but she found me." Drusilla frowned, looking confused. "Couldn't drink _her_, no, but I needed her, needed so badly..." 

Something clicked in his mind. "You went after the Slayer, Dru?" 

"She came to me. Like the sunlight at midnight. And I couldn't hurt her, _had_ to hurt her..." 

He stroked her cheek, wiping some blood she had dribbled. "We'll get her, pet." She wimpered, so he stuck his bloody finger in her mouth. She sucked, then moved on to his hand. "Promise I'll get you the Slayer." 

***

"Wanna dance?" 

Willow turned to see Frank, a guy she knew from computer class. He was standing behind her, an uneasy smile plastered on his face. He glanced around him when she didn't answer. 

"I mean, if you don't want to, that's cool. But if you do, then I do." He paused. "Dance, I mean. With you." She stayed silent, searching her brain for an english word. _If (GuyWantsToDance==True) {MakeNoises();}_ Somehow, that didn't seem to be what she was looking for. He was nervous now; wiping his hand on his pants, glancing around . . . 

"Yeah." She remembered that word, and spoke it. 

"You do? I mean, that's great." He smiled, a real smile this time, and led her out to the dance floor. On the other side of the room, Jesse was following Cordelia around, and to her side, the band was doing its thing. She wasn't sure exactly what that thing *was*, because it didn't sound like music. She quickly forgot about the band, however, when Frank started dancing. He was moving fast, touching her hand at times, sometimes as far as two feet from her. She wiggled, blushed, and stepped back, into Harmony. 

"Hey!-Oh, heeeey. You're dancing, Willow. I didn't know there was a boy that would stoop that low." 

Willow felt her blush deepen, and quickly left the floor. Frank followed. 

"Why'd you go? You were doing ok." 

She shook her head, and spoke her thoughts out loud. "If Embarressment equals-equals True, Run." Then she realized what she'd just said, and buried her face in her hands. But he was laughing. 

Half an hour later, when she had to go, she felt refreshed. "Seeya," she told Frank, and left the Bronze feeling better then she had in weeks. When she got home, and re-checked her homework, the feeling came crashing down around her. Xander. Where was Xander? He should have been there - he wouldn't have understood any of what they were saying, but he should have been there. XanderXanderXander. She'd been having a good time while Xander was who knew where, enduring who knew what. 

She reached for the phonw, then stopped. She was supposed to be in bed in five minutes. And she'd talk to Jesse tommorow. She wiped away her tears, and went to brush her teeth. 

***

He saw someone lying dead in the gutter. He couldn't make out who it was, so he went closer, closer . . . There was a police line, the tape seen on TV shows so many times, only this time the words read: **POLICE DON'T CARE**. He ducked under it, and knelt over the body. He was crying, he knew who it was . . . Tears shining on his cheeks. He hadn't deserved to die like this, shouldn't have died at all . . . 

Xander wondered who the boy was. 

He sat there, crying, for the longest time. Then the cops showed up, but he ignored them. They crossed the line, talking and joking amongst themselves. One practiced his aim, shooting over beer cans that had been left near the scene of the crime. After a few minutes of this, he came over to Xander. "Miss, this is a crime scene, you'll have to move along." Xander looked up at the man blankly. Miss? Crime scene? This is what the guy thought a crime scene was? The cop toed the corpse, flipping it over. Xander craned to see the face - 

It was him. Alexender Harris. 

He stood, looked the cop in the eye. "This isn't a crime scene, this is a _murder_ scene. You want to know what a crime scene is? A crime scene is where Xander lived, where his mother died because the city couldn't buy her health insurance, a crime scene is the politician's office where they decided the money was needed for a playground." His voice was higher, female, and shaking with rage. Who am I, he wondered desperately. "He grew up in a crime scene, you, you . . ." He couldn't swear, couldn't, and so continued, fast. "Where his father missed his mother so hard, and the only way he knew of taking it was on his fifteen year old son. Don't tell me this is a crime scene." 

He was crying now, struggling to get out the words. "Don't pretend to care about him now that he's dead, and you can't do anything." That was it. He'd admitted he was dead, and he couldn't keep talking now, couldn't do anything. He fell to his knees, weeping into his hands. "Just . . . Don't . . . Please don't . . . " 

The cop sighed, called out to his partner. "Hey, you want to take this girl home?" 

One of the other cops looked over. "Sure thing, Frank. Come over here, Willow." 

How does he know my name? Is my name Willow? Oh, God . . . 

He was shoved into the back of the cops car, read his rights. "And, of course, you'll be removed from school until all this is straightned out." 

NO! 

What? Oh, yeah, that's Willow thinking . . . 

The cop turned to leer at him, and he floated away, wanting to stay and help Willow. But fate spoken, and he was dropped into another dream, again forgetting he lived only in the dreamworld. 

   [1]: mailto:tistur@excite.com



End file.
